MATCH INFO

Italy's Letizia Camera sets against China as she and her teammates won the match to reach the gold-medal match

Lima, Peru, July 30, 2011 - Italy defeated China 25-21, 25-20, 25-16 Saturday in the first of two gold-medal semifinal matches in the FIVB Volleyball Women´s Junior World Championship Peru 2011 played in Lima.

Italy will play the winner of the other semifinal match between top-ranked Brazil and the United States on Sunday, while China will face the semifinal loser in the bronze-medal match.

The same girls of this Italian squad played in the last FIVB Girl´s Youth World Championship and reached the 8th place. In the last FIVB Volleyball Women´s Junior World Championship, Italy did not participate.

Valentina Diouf was Italy's top scorer with 19 points, next to Floriana Bertone, Laura Baggi and Caterina Bosetti with 10 points each. For China, the top scorer was Yanchi Pi with 13 points, next to Zhou Yang with 8 points.

The beginning of the first set was for Italy. Thanks to Bertone´s spikes (five spikes and one ace in the set), Italy could reach the advantage of five points in the first technical time out (8-3). China's dig started to improve (four in the set) and they started to get closer to Italy with a point difference of two. The second technical time out came at 16-13 in favor of Italy because of the China's reception error. Baggi´s spike (three points in the set) helped to improve the score and they reached to their 20th point. Italy started to have problems in dig and serve, which is an advantage to China. However, Italy defined the set to 25-21 in 24 minutes, because of Qi Wang service error.

The second set had a tight beginning. The first technical time out came with one point difference in favor of the Italian squad. China's dig (four in this set) was not strong enough to resist all of Diouf´s spikes (six points in the set). The second technical time out was for Italy at 16-10 because of China's reception problems. Pi (four points in the set) scored China's 16th point with a spike, but Italy was already ahead with 22 points. The set ended in 23 minutes at 25-20 in favor to Italy.

At the beginning of the third set, Italy was ahead again. Bertone scored the 8th point and the second technical time out had a difference of four points. Pixin Liu made a good block, which helped to improve China's score to 10 points. However, Italy's spikes increased in quantity and quality (13 in the set) and they got the second technical time out leading 16-10. China scored two straight points because of Italy's bad reception. Italy reached the point difference of eight points because of China's dig problems (two in the set). The set ended to 25-16 in 21 minutes thanks to Diouf´s spike.